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Can More Accessory Dwelling Units Fix LA's Housing Shortage?
Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
Can more accessory dwelling units help a city with a chronic housing shortage?
A wave of new ADU startups that are based in L.A. or serving the region are betting on it. ADU companies like Otto (formerly known as Homestead), which focus on converting pre-existing structures (such as a garage) into housing, serve as a one-stop shop that will help homeowners with financing, design, permitting and labor. Other companies like Azure Printed Homes, Cover, United Dwelling and Villa Homes offer factory-built ADUs that are constructed off-site — also known as “prefab” ADUs. Others still, such as Cottage (based in San Francisco) partner with local contractors and help homeowners design, build and attain permits for their own custom ADUs.
ADUs (also known as granny flats, in-law apartments or backyard homes) describe a category of small, in most cases self-contained homes that can be built beside the original property. A prospect that’s currently trending in Los Angeles, where a chronic housing shortage and sky-high rents coupled with a 2017 state law forcing cities to relax their ADU regulations.
But as novice ADU builders soon discovered, constructing a small house isn’t a small task.
“I wouldn’t say [..building an ADU] is exactly easy, almost anywhere,” said Celeste Goyer, the policy director of Casita Coalition, an L.A.-based organization focused on expanding the use of ADUs for affordable housing throughout the state. “You can’t just go home and pick up a hammer, and have your cousin help you build your ADU. And so expectation management for everyone involved is important.”
The process of getting approved for an ADU normally takes months.
“Generally, many people struggle with the length and complexity of the permitting process and feel like their jurisdictions impose unnecessary red tape in the permitting process,” said Alex Czarnecki, founder and CEO of the custom ADU firm Cottage.
But a number of additional laws may make ADU construction easier in California. Last year Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 9 into law, which allows California homeowners to build a second house on a single-family zoned lot. Another law known as AB 221 requires local authorities to act on ADU permit applications within 60 days otherwise it’s automatically approved.
“It’s common for certain municipalities to take longer than that to respond to an application or provide incomplete sets of comments,” said Czarnecki. “This drags out timelines for permitting and ultimately impacts the pace at which we can add housing.”
Despite the new laws, few homeowners, Czarnecki said, should attempt to build an ADU by themselves.
“The fact remains that the average homeowner is not a land developer and is not trained or prepared to oversee and manage the design and construction of a new unit on their lot,” added Czarnecki.
To that end, the heads of some ADU companies still believe more has to be done to improve financing the expensive building projects — as well as making them more affordable to low-income and moderate-income individuals. A typical prefab ADU ranges anywhere from $140,000 to $300,000. Custom ADUs are even more expensive. Converting a garage is cheaper, but in L.A., the process can easily approach six figures. None of which factors in the extra costs of permits, which ADU firm Modal estimates costs anywhere between $4,000 to $8,000 in Los Angeles.
There are few mainstream financing options for ADUs available, and renovation loans or cash-out refinancing often don’t cover the entire cost of the project. In a 2021 survey of homeowners by UC Berkeley, nearly 62% said they relied on cash savings or money from a friend or relative to pay for their ADU.
ADU advocates often tout it as an “affordable housing” solution — assuming that property owners will rent them out as an extra source of income. But with the median price of a single-family dwelling in L.A. County almost nearing $1 million, building an ADU is likely an opportunity reserved for more high-income individuals.
“Financing is really the only thing I think of that the city of L.A. and everywhere else really needs to work on. I think L.A. has been doing great with ADU use, and hopefully it will get better,” said Ross Maguire, CEO of Azure Printed Homes.
Samuel Schnieder, the CEO of Otto, said that ADU financing is a major barrier to expansion. Adding that, “It’s often a Catch-22 that the people who are the best equipped or the most enthusiastic about getting an ADU are the ones who can’t necessarily afford it.”
The California Housing Finance Agency this year began offering up to $40,000 in grants for such individuals, but it only covers new ADU “pre-construction” costs, which include everything from impact fees to permits to site prep. In Los Angeles, homeowners with an income below $180,000 qualify for such grants.
A total of 840 people in California have received grants since September — with all but a fraction receiving the full amount, a CHFA spokesperson confirmed to dot.LA.
First launched in 2019, Azure Printed Homes, based out of Culver City, relies on robotic printers to speed up the construction process. The company said it can 3D-print the walls of a 120-square foot unit in less than a day.
Maguire told dot.LA that Azure — which opened up reservations earlier this year — has received pre-orders for 167 units from 119 customers, totaling over $19 million in pre-orders.
But it’s unlikely you’ll see most of these units advertised as new rentals on Craigslist. Maguire says that most of Azure’s customer base desire an ADU to have more space for themselves or to house relatives, rather than to rent out as an additional source of income.
As such, some homeowners opt for factory-built ADUs instead of a more customized option, opting to shorten the timeline for inspections.
“Because our units are pre-approved with the State of California, there’s not a building and safety check that needs to happen on a local level with the city or county of L.A.,” Maguire told dot.LA..
However, even pre-fab ADUs have to be inspected on-site by the local planning authority. “(...the L.A.) Planning Department needs to look at how those modules interact with a specific site themselves, a process that can't be pre-approved as they are site specific,” confirmed a spokesperson for Azure.
In an effort to make the ADU permitting process faster, last year, the city of Los Angeles launched a set of “Standard Plans” that were pre-approved by LADBS. But such plans aren’t cheap — and won’t exempt homeowners from inspections.
“It should be noted that regardless of what pre-approved plan you choose, pre-approved plans still must go through the normal site-specific checks in order for the project to receive a permit,” said Czarnecki.
And if homeowners have the misfortune of building a Standard Plan ADU on an oddly-shaped lot or somewhere with atypical characteristics, they may have to go back to square one. In other words, their ADU will no longer be considered “pre-approved” and will have to go through the longer permitting process.
“Although the Standard Plans are a good jumping off point for creating a product that anyone can use -- at the end of the day, they’re mostly more expensive plans from what I’ve seen,” said Otto’s Schneider.
Casita Coalition and groups like California YIMBY are calling for better financing options for ADUs, particularly those that benefit individual cash-poor homeowners. At present, new ADUs are predominantly built in wealthier, whiter areas. In order for ADUs to actually help bridge the racial-wealth gap, policy experts say they have to actually be a viable option for the less affluent.
“I would be very pleased if more financing options [..for ADUs] developed from credit unions and community financial institutions to provide ADU-tailored loans to help lower income and moderate income home owners build ADUs,” Goyer told dot.LA.
Until then, the dream of Angelenos generating income from their backyards may remain just that.
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- United Dwelling Raises $10M to Address the Housing Shortage ... ›
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- Can New Tech and ADUs Solve LA’s Housing Crisis? - dot.LA ›
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Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
https://twitter.com/askhalid
TikTok Timeline Update: The Rise and Pause of a Social Video Giant
03:07 PM | July 08, 2022
TikTok | Solen Feyissa | Flickr
See our timeline below for key developments TikTok's story over the last 10 years, starting with the founding of ByteDance and moving through the app's rise to popularity and the mounting concerns about data privacy and security.
March 2012: Internet entrepreneur Zhang Yiming founds ByteDance in Beijing.
August 2012: ByteDance launches its first product, Toutiao, an AI-powered news aggregator.
July 2014: Alex Zhu launches Musical.ly, an app that enables users to create short-form lipsync music videos; Musical.ly is headquartered in Shanghai with an office in Santa Monica.
July 2015: Musical.ly hits #1 in Apple app store.
September 2016: ByteDance launches Douyin, an app with similar functionality as Musical.ly; within a year, the Chinese app achieves 100 million users and 1 billion views per day.
September 2017: ByteDance brings Douyin outside of China's Great Firewall under the name of TikTok; the app does well in numerous Asian markets.
November 2017: ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion; the company starts operating Musical.ly in the US, Douyin in China and TikTok in other markets.
August 2018: ByteDance merges Musical.ly with TikTok and migrates all user profiles to TikTok; Alex Zhu becomes TikTok senior vice president, saying, "Combining Musical.ly and TikTok is a natural fit given the shared mission of both experiences – to create a community where everyone can be a creator."
October 2018: ByteDance achieves a record $75 billion valuation, making it the world's biggest privately backed startup.
February 2019: Lil Nas X releases "Old Town Road" on TikTok, catalyzing a viral sensation that ultimately reaches #1 on Billboard's charts.
February 2019: TikTok is fined $5.7 million for child data privacy violations.
September 2019:Washington Post reports that TikTok may be censoring protests in Hong Kong.
September 2019: Leaked documents show TikTok instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention various subjects deemed offensive by the Chinese government and Communist Party, The Guardian reports.
October 2019: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio calls on the U.S. government to investigate the national security implications of ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly, citing concerns over the Chinese government and Communist Party's use of TikTok to censor content and silence open discussion.
October 2019: U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton ask U.S. Acting Director of National Intelligence to assess the national security risks from TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps, and request a congressional briefing on the findings.
October 2019: Alex Zhu begins reporting directly to ByteDance head Zhang Yiming; he had previously reported to the head of Douyin.
November 2019: The U.S. government launches an investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly on the grounds that ByteDance did not seek clearance when it acquired Musical.ly.
TikTok reportedly has 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S. at this time.
December 2019: The U.S. Defense Department's Defense Information Systems Agency issues a recommendation that military personnel delete TikTok from all smartphones.
Q4 2019: TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world and second in the U.S.
January 2020: Several U.S. military branches ban TikTok on government-issued smartphones.
March 2020: U.S. officials reach out to TikTok to discuss political disinformation.
April 2020: TikTok surpasses 2 billion downloads and sets the record for quarterly downloads.
May 2020: Various child privacy groups file a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that TikTok is violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and flouting terms agreed to following its February 2019 settlement.
A TikTok spokesperson says the company "takes the issue of safety seriously for all our users, and we continue to further strengthen our safeguards and introduce new measures to protect young people on the app."
May 2020: ByteDance hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as chief operating officer and TikTok chief executive officer.
June 2020: Teens organize on TikTok to fool Trump administration into anticipating high attendance for the President's Tulsa, Oklahoma campaign rally.
June 2020: India bans 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, citing national security and data privacy concerns; the move comes amid ongoing skirmishes between the two countries on the China-India border.
July 2020: Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison launches an investigation into TikTok surrounding data concerns.
July 2020: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirms the U.S. is looking into banning TikTok over concerns the app is sharing data with China; the next day, President Trump says he is considering a ban, framing it as a potential retaliation tactic against China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Aug. 2, 2020: Microsoft issues a blog post citing a conversation between chief executive Satya Nadella and President Trump around the company's potential acquisition of TikTok.
Aug. 4, 2020: Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrisson says there is not sufficient evidence to suggest a TikTok ban is necessary.
Aug. 6, 2020: President Trump issues an executive order banning American companies from transacting with ByteDance or its subsidiaries, namely TikTok; the U.S. Secretary of Commerce is to identify specific prohibited "transactions" 45 days after the order is issued.
Aug. 14, 2020: Trump issues another executive order demanding ByteDance "divest all interests and rights" in its assets and property that enable TikTok's U.S. operations, and data collected via TikTok in the U.S., within 90 days. The order says the U.S. investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly presented "credible evidence" that ByteDance "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States."
Aug. 17, 2020: Oracle enters the discussion as a reported TikTok suitor.
Aug. 18, 2020: President Trump says he would support Oracle buying TikTok. Oracle's cofounder and CTO Larry Ellison had previously said he supports Trump and had fundraised for him in February 2020.
Aug. 24, 2020: TikTok announces it is suing the Trump administration over the ban for failure to protect due process. Separately, a U.S.-based TikTok employee also sues the administration, stating, "I am a patriot"
Aug. 26, 2020:Kevin Mayer steps down from ByteDance and TikTok, citing a diminished role in a letter to colleagues. Rumors swirl that he was left out of ByteDance's negotiations with potential acquirers
Aug. 27, 2020: Walmart issues a statement that it is interested in partnering with Microsoft to acquire TikTok.
Aug. 28, 2020: L.A.-based Triller, a TikTok upstart competitor, is reported to have issued a bid for TikTok along with investment firm Centricus.
Aug. 29, 2020:The Chinese government issues new export rules that complicate the exportation of TikTok's underlying technology – namely its "For You" algorithm – to any foreign buyer.
Aug. 31, 2020:CNBC reports TikTok has chosen a buyer, with an expected sale price of $20 billion - $30 billion.
Sept. 3, 2020: With uncertainty over whether a buyer will be able to acquire TikTok's algorithm, and debate mounting over how that affects the value of the company, numerous outlets negotiations are likely to slow as the Chinese government increases its involvement.
Sept. 13, 2020: Microsoft says in a blog post that "ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok's US operations to Microsoft." The company says it would have made "significant changes" to ensure security, privacy, online safety and combatting disinformation.
Sept. 14, 2020: Oracle confirms that it has been selected by ByteDance to become a "trusted technology provider" with TikTok. The company says the proposal was submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says on CNBC that the proposal includes making TikTok-global a U.S. headquartered company with 20,000 new jobs.
Mnuchin adds that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is reviewing the proposal this week for national security implications, and will make a recommendation to the president, who will then review the proposal.
Sept. 19, 2020: President Trump tells reporters he approved the deal in concept between Oracle and TikTok's parent company ByteDance, in which Oracle and Walmart would partner with the app in the U.S. The U.S. government postpones a planned ban on TikTok for one week.
Sept. 27, 2020: A federal judge in Washington temporarily blocks President Trump’s order banning TikTok, granting the social media firm a reprieve just hours before it was to be removed from mobile app stores. The judge says Trump’s order was “largely a unilateral decision with very little opportunity for plaintiffs to be heard,” according to the Washington Post.
Oct. 30, 2020: TikTok averts a U.S. ban again after a federal judge in Pennsylvania temporarily blocks restrictions set to take place on Nov. 12—the Trump administration's deadline for ByteDance to close a deal in the U.S.
Nov. 7, 2020: Democrat Joe Biden defeats President Trump in the presidential election, the Associated Press and other media outlets confirm. A few days later, an advisor to President-elect Biden says it is “too early to say” Biden’s thoughts on TikTok.
Nov. 11, 2020: TikTok asks a judge to extend the deadline for its sale by 30 days. The company says it hasn’t heard an update from the administration in weeks.
Nov. 12, 2020: The U.S. Commerce Department says it won’t enforce the sale deadline imposed by Trump’s order "pending further legal developments." The department cites the Pennsylvania ruling from October that found the TikTok crackdown exceeded the government’s power.
Nov. 13, 2020: The U.S. government extends its deadline by 15 days, giving TikTok until Nov. 27 to strike a deal that allays the government’s national security concerns.
Nov. 26, 2020: ByteDance gets another week to sell off TikTok’s U.S. business. A spokesperson for the Treasury Department tells CNBC that the government granted the extension until Dec. 4 “to allow time to review a revised submission” that it recently received.
Dec. 4, 2020: The latest deadline passes without an approved deal to sell TikTok. The Treasury Department says it won’t extend the deadline again, but there are “no plans to enforce anything,” a source tells The Washington Post.
Dec. 14, 2020: The Federal Trade Commission orders TikTok—along with Snap, YouTube, Twitter and other social media and streaming sites—to turn over information about how they collect and use information about users.
Feb. 10, 2021: Newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden slams the brakes on forcing a TikTok sale. In court papers, Biden administration lawyers file a motion to postpone the cases related to a potential ban of the popular social media app.
June 9, 2021: President Biden revokes Trump’s executive order that sought to ban TikTok and replaces it with one that calls for a broader review of foreign-controlled apps that may pose national security risks.
June 25, 2021: CNBC reports TikTok is tightly controlled by Chinese parent company ByteDance. Insiders tell the news outlet that ByteDance has access to TikTok’s American user data and is closely involved in the Culver City company’s decision-making.
July 20, 2021: Pakistan bans TikTok for the fourth time, citing “inappropriate content.” The country lifts the latest ban a few months later.
Sept 27, 2021: TikTok announces that it has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users as the app continues to rapidly rise in popularity.
Oct. 26, 2021: During a public hearing, U.S. lawmakers press Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, on whether TikTok’s Chinese ownership could expose consumer data to Beijing. Beckerman says “access controls for our data is done by our U.S. teams,” adding that the data that TikTok collects is “not of a national security importance,” according to the New York Times.
Dec. 17 2021: A Wall Street Journal investigation shows that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is flooding teens’ video feeds with eating disorder content.
December 2021: TikTok overtakes Google as the most-visited website on the internet.
Feb. 8, 2022: Facing criticism over hosting harmful content, TikTok announces new rules aimed at preventing viral hoaxes, shielding the LGBTQ community from harassment and removing videos promoting unhealthy eating.
February 2022: As Russia invades Ukraine, TikTok is awash in raw footage from the battlefield and false and misleading clips. The war raises fresh concerns about TikTok’s handling of misinformation on its platform.
March 2, 2022: A bipartisan group of state attorneys general launch an investigation into TikTok, examining whether the social media giant is harming children and young adults through the content on its platform.
March 11, 2022:Reuters reports that TikTok is close to a deal to store all of the video-sharing app’s U.S. user data with American software giant Oracle. The partnership is aimed at resolving the U.S. government’s national security concerns.
March 15, 2022: California lawmakers unveil a first-of-its-kind bill to let parents sue social media platforms like TikTok for allegedly addicting children to their apps.
March 31, 2022: Attorneys general from 44 U.S. states and territories urge TikTok and Santa Monica-based Snap to strengthen parental controls on their platforms, telling the social media giants that they must do more to protect kids online.
April 3, 2022: “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical” wins a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. It’s the first Grammy-winning album to originate on TikTok, solidifying the app’s growing influence over the music industry.
April 15, 2022: The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice launch probes into TikTok’s moderation of content depicting child sexual abuse, according to the Financial Times.
April 2022: TikTok is the most-downloaded app in the world during the first quarter of 2022, according to a study from digital analytics firm Sensor Tower.
May 12, 2022: The mother of a 10-year-old girl who died after allegedly trying a dangerous “Blackout Challenge” sues TikTok. The case is one of several to claim the app’s algorithm showed kids and teens videos of people choking themselves until they pass out.
June 17, 2022: BuzzFeed News publishes a bombshell report that TikTok’s data on U.S. users was repeatedly accessed in China by employees of parent company ByteDance. The report raises fresh privacy and security concerns about the Chinese-owned social media app.
The same day, TikTok announces that it migrated all of its U.S. user traffic to servers operated by American software giant Oracle, an effort to assuage concerns that American data could fall into the hands of the Chinese government.
June 28, 2022: In the wake of the BuzzFeed report, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr urges Apple and Google to remove TikTok from its app stores. Nine Republican U.S. senators send a letter to TikTok with questions about the company’s handling of American data.
June 30, 2022: TikTok responds to Republican lawmakers by detailing its plans on keeping U.S. data out of the hands of Chinese parent company ByteDance. The company’s letter confirms that ByteDance employees in China can access TikTok data, but only when “subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls” and approvals overseen by its U.S.-based security team.
July 5, 2022: Leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether TikTok deceived the public about whether people in China could access American user data.July 29, 2022: Bloomberg reports the Chinese government requested TikTok host stealth, propaganda accounts—a move that TikTok executives denied due to their growing efforts to distance the platform from its Chinese origins.
August 5, 2022: The flood of information coming from within the organization leads TikTok to hire roles meant to prevent internal leaks.
August 11, 2022: A Forbes review of TikTok and ByteDance employees’ LinkedIn profiles reveals that 300 current employees previously worked for Chinese state media publications. Fifteen employees apparently were employed by both at the same time.
August 16, 2022: Oracle begins its audit of TikTok’s algorithm and content moderation process to determine if the Chinese government has interfered with the platform.
August 18, 2022: Developer Felix Krause finds that the app monitors all keyboard inputs and tags, which could record private data like passwords and credit card information. TikTok denies these claims.
September 14, 2022: TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas appears before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and says its ongoing negotiations with the U.S. government “will satisfy all national security concerns.” Notably, Pappas would not fully commit to cutting off U.S. data flow to China.
September 21, 2022: Former TikTok executives claim they were instructed to follow directions from ByteDance and had limited power to make internal decisions as people question TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s influence.
September 24, 2022: British regulators from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) send TikTok a warning over how the company handles children’s data—a warning that could lead to a $29 million fine.
September 26, 2022: The Justice Department reaches a “preliminary agreement” with TikTok over national security concerns, though details are still being negotiated.
October 12, 2022: A BBC report finds that TikTok profited from refugees collecting donations via the app’s live streaming feature, with some claiming the platform took up to 70% of the profits.
October 20, 2022: A Forbes report reveals that ByteDance intended to use TikTok to monitor the location of American citizens as a method of surveillance. TikTok denies these claims.
October 27, 2022: Even as the government places increasing pressure on TikTok, the Biden administration invites eight TikTok stars to the White House in an effort to reach Gen Z voters.
That same day, A Philadelphia judge rules that TikTok is immune in a lawsuit claiming the app was responsible for the death of a child participating in the “blackout challenge.”
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LA Tech Updates: EV-Makers Rivian, Fisker, Karma Get Super-charged; Facebook issue crashes TikTok
03:13 PM | July 10, 2020
Here are the latest updates on news affecting Los Angeles' startup and tech communities. Sign up for our newsletter and follow dot.LA on Twitter for more.
Today:
- Tesla shares soar, Fisker rumored to go public, Karma gets $100m
- Facebook issues crash TikTok, Pinterest, Spotify
A Super-Charged Electric Vehicle Market: Rivian, Fisker and Karma Rake in Funds
Rivian Automotive is the maker of electric pickup trucks.
Tesla's success has super-charged investor interest in the electric vehicle market.
Exhibit A is the two Southern California-based electric car makers, Fisker and Karma, which secured millions in funding this week as they sought to ramp up production. Then came word Fisker, created by one-time Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, is now in talks to go public through a sale to a so-called blank-check acquisition company, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Today, Detroit-based Rivian Automotive, maker of electric pickup trucks that's backed in part by Ford Motor Co., announced that it secured $2.5 billion in funding from private investors.
The race to push out more electric vehicles comes as after Tesla supplanted Toyota as the most valuable car maker. Its shares have been soaring and it now has a market cap that stands at over $285 billion despite controversies and a much lower production volume.
Spartan Energy is bidding against other special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs as they are called, to bring Fisker public through a reverse merger, according to the report. Spartan is backed by Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm.
With a freshly secured $50 million in private funds, Fisker plans to sell the Fisker Ocean luxury electric SUV at a starting price of $37,500 in 2022. Fisker's previous venture Fisker Automotive fell into bankruptcy in 2013 and was bought by a Chinese group that rebranded it Karma. That company, which has been struggling after several layoff rounds and restructuring, is Karma and earlier this week secured $100 million from investors. It hopes to use that to raise a total of $300 million and roll out a line of electric vehicles.Facebook issue crashes Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest
farm5.staticflickr.comIf you were trying to use a handful of iOS apps including Spotify, TikTok and Pinterest Friday morning chances are you couldn't get in because of a Facebook log-in issue.
The hiccup came from Facebook's software development kit (SDK), which several apps rely on to operate. Developers use SDK for users who want to sign in with their Facebook account.
"Earlier today, a code change triggered crashes for some iOS apps using the Facebook SDK," Facebook's developer site announced. "We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience."
The crash hit some of the biggest apps.
"Something's out of tune," Spotify's Status account said on Twitter in the early morning. "We're currently investigating, and we'll keep you posted here!"
It's the second time this year the Facebook interface has caused a crash.
Something's out of tune. We're currently investigating, and we'll keep you posted here!
— Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) July 10, 2020
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Rachel Uranga
Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.
https://twitter.com/racheluranga
rachel@dot.la
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